Flooring a loft

kev_gray

Hey all,

I'm looking at getting ideas on the best plan of attack for flooring my loft. I did a search and all I could find was loft conversions. This is not what I am after, all it is to be used for is storage of odds and ends as well as maybe a bit of scaletrix.

Currently it is partially floored in the centre by previous owners. It has no ladders or other access and it is a bit of a climb up to it. It does however have lights up there, even if they are wired up a bit funny and require the hall light to be on for them to work!!

What is my best plan of attack? Get ladders first? Floor it first? Get an actual electric socket up there? And how do I go about flooring it? Is it just screwing the floorboards to the joists or anything else special? Any tips etc are greatly appreciated!

diable

You have to protect any halogen lights or light fitting that are recessed as well as making sure cables and pipe work going to be under the floor.

If you are going to use the loft often then I would get a proper foldaway ladder fitted rather then an aluminium one that just slides in to the loft and this should be fitted before boarding out the loft.

Arfa__

B&Q, Wickes, Homebase etc do packs of chipboard tongue'n'groove loft boards. About a fiver for a pack of 3 x 1250x330mm pieces. I've just done our loft, area of about 5m^2 for about £100 ish. B&Q recently had them on special for £4.11 mind, dunno if that's still on, need to check as I need to go back a get another half dozen.

As for fitting, these just slot together, offset each row, as the ends don't slot together. The toughest bit is sawing them to go around anything in the way. You should have insulation down already in your loft, if this is only level to the tops of joists, you've probably only got around 15cm worth, which is less than what they recommend these days. Currently 27cm is what's recommended, however achieve this with the loft flooring, you'll need to lay wood on top of the joists to raise the floor up enough.

Just brought a fold away Abru loft ladder too. Again B&Q recently had 30% off these, got one that breaks into 3 separate pieces for £50. Tiny bit more than one that's in 2 pieces, however it requires slightly less swing space to fold away. Measure up carefully the space around and above your hatch carefully with regards to this.

daveyjp

You can buy lofting boards from any DIY store. They are tongue and groved so don't need screwing or nailing down and narrow enough to fit through a loft hatch - handy if you need to remove them to do work at a later date. If you have wires etc running along joists make a note on the boards as to where they are.

A proper ladder makes it easier to get into the loft, but not a requirement - this should be fitted first. If space is tight an electric saw also makes it easier to cut the boards in the loft rather than be up and down steps all day taking them to an area where they can be cut.

Having lights linked to the hall lights is a good idea (mine is the same) as it stops you leaving lights on in the loft and burning the house down - my sister learnt this the hard way.

dld2s

Hi,

i'm no expert but this is what I did, fitted new loft drop down door as ours was to small, we used 8x2 T&G boards, fitted ladders after boarding

To add extra insulation and have a air space above it and strengthen rafter we screwed and glued wooden lengths to the top of existing joists, can't remember size but they were breadth of existing joists and enough in height so that a half inch or so air gap was left between floor and the new size insulation underneath. I then put a double electrical socket in extending the existing circuit from a room below and also fitted a fluorescent light, again extending existing circuit, but this time from lighting circuit.(note existing light cable etc. were put through either drilled holes or notches in new wood that was added and metal protection plates put above where cable ran through, also dont cover cables with insulation)

All boards were screwed (do not nail) at 90% angles to the joists, some joist may be sitting slightly lower/higher than others and when you screw on boards they may move and you will stiffen the ceilings underneath so you may get some small cracking around the edges of ceiling I just repaired the few bits I got with decorators caulk and they've been fine. Remember to leave expansion gaps at the walls and don't block eaves as you still need circulation in the loft

I don't know if this is the way a expert would do it and since doing it i've been told I should maybe have put a vapour barrier in and the extra wood I added should may just have been put at 90% angles to the existing joists and not on top (maybe someone else can say if this has to be done) but i did it "my way" 5 years ago and everything has been fine except for one thing, we now have a loft absolutely full to the gunnells of useless stuff we would have probably just thrown out/given away in the past

Gloomendoom

You laid the joist extensions in the correct orientation. However, if your ceiling underneath was cracking they were probably not deep enough. No good for heavy traffic but probably more than enough for storage purposes.

ic

Arfa__ wrote: »

As for fitting, these just slot together, offset each row, as the ends don't slot together.

You should make sure the ends of the boards line up with the joists - don't have the ends butted together above fresh air. This will probably mean you need to cut all your boards to the correct size, you'll just need to do this as you go, as you'll probably find the distances between the joists vary a little.

dld2s

Sorry Gloomnedoom, wasn't really clear, ceiling wasn't really cracking, just some hairline cracks where ceiling meets wall. I just put it down to the fact there was some movement in the joists when the boards were getting screwed on, some joists moving up and some moving down depending on joists next to them, this was when I did it, never been any cracks since and there is a lot of heavy stuff up there

SailorSam

I've put loads of extra insulation in my loft so i couldn't screw boards down if i wanted to, but because it's only used to store stuff, i've thrown whatever boards i could get hold of on top of the insulation, there's old doors; kitchen and bedroom units anything that was going spare. Of course it's no good if you want to use the loft, but maybe you can use the scaletric in the centre where the proper boards are.

kev_gray

Thanks for the advice guys! Gonna try and head to B&Q this evening and get a load of panels to floor the rest of the loft. Will then see about ladders and electricity afterwards!

serverdog

Not sure if this is too late, but check out your local timber merchants before going to B&Q. Can save you loads of money if you have a decent sized loft to board up.

We went for the timber merchant to the same 11mm T&G loft boards, but they were 600mm x 2.4m, and we got them way cheaper than the smaller boards at B&Q.

Also remember that if you are going to raise your joists, to consider the size of the unsupported span over your rooms, and consider cross-joisting rather than just raising inline.